Slashdot Mirror
PIRATE Act Introduced in Congress
certron writes "Xeni Jardin has written a story for Wired about the "Protecting Intellectual Rights Against Theft and Expropriation Act of 2004" aka the PIRATE Act. It and another related bill are designed to criminalize P2P filesharing by lowering the burden of proof for law enforcement and proposing jail terms of up to 10 years. The bill was introduced by Sens. Orrin Hatch and Patrick Leahy, both of whom received large contributions from the entertainment industries. Under the bill, even sharing a single file (if a judge decides the value is over $10,000) could land a user in jail. Read the full text of Orrin Hatch's remarks."
sometimes it is just so blatantly obvious that people will go to great lengths to contrive clever acronyms despite the obvious redundancies within the actual expanded title.
come on now.
Honestly, the prisons are full enough as it is with petty criminals, if they even attempt to enforce these they are going to fill them up even faster. And, who wants to put in jail? If this gets passed and starts getting actively enforced, hopefully someone is going to stand up against this. I hope you've all donated to EFF lately...
And so we go, on with our lives
We know the truth, but prefer lies
Lies are simple, simple is bliss
This is from Hatch's own site . . .
- Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, today joined Ranking Democrat Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) in introducing the "Protecting Intellectual Rights Against Theft and Expropriation Act" (the "PIRATE Act") to allow the Department of Justice to exercise its existing enforcement powers through a civil, rather than criminal, enforcement proceeding.Does anyone need more proof that the Republicans and Dems have become just two sides of the same coin? After this, I don't trust them to do much of anything right. *sigh*
----
"Ours was a free culture. It is becoming much less so."-Lawrence Lessig
Last I checked copyright infringement was still illegal. Does society need more laws that state copyright infringement with P2P is now illegal? ... I mean honestly P2P development is strict freedom of speech. Not to mention the good that comes from it [e.g. BitTorrent].
Laws like this make me proud to live in a backwards country such as Canada.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
DMCA... PIRATE... Who do you think owns your country? I don't mean to offend you geeks in the US and EU, but your governments perpetually place the interests of large corporations above citizens. Your government is not acting in your best interest. Tell your elected officials that you disagree with what they are supporting, and command them to stop.
"It is critical that we bring the moral force of the government to bear against those who knowingly violate the federal copyrights enshrined in our Constitution."
Yeah. I'll feel guilty about it, when the fed actually proves that copyrights exist in order to "promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries."
It sure doesn't feel like limited times.
You've heard it before. And you'll hear it many times over again.
"Sharing" music on a P2P network is stealing, yes, but under what odd twisting of logic can it be worse than shoplifting the CD?
We are seeing the music industry going steadily more insane every day, and when something with that much money goes mad life gets interesting. Piracy isn't right, but it is inevitable during the transition between the RIAA and whatever distribution/compensation model we invent to replace it. Draconian laws with punishments as inappropriate as this one wants are definately not the solution to theft of music.
I find it especially ironic that the same congress that can't seem to punish the aristocrats who steal millions from their employees wants to send people to jail for up to ten years for stealing a little music...
"Mission Accomplished" -- George W. Bush May 1, 2003
You're right, she does. Gail Zappa goes after cover bands who use Frank Zappa's name, forcing them to take all references and photos of him off of their websites and their flyers. The most they can do is say something like 'Performing the music of FZ" or "...the music of a guy named Frank," and the whole thing starts to look ridiculous.
Really, to smother Frank Zappa's name and image under a mountain of lawyers like that seems kind of odd, especially considering how much disdain the man himself had for the music industry's choke-hold on everything.
Oh, well.
You are in error. No-one is screaming. Thank you for your cooperation.
...the P2P companies are trying to ransom the entertainment industries into accepting their networks as a distribution channel and source of revenue.
This is HILARIOUS! They're accusing P2P "companies" of trying to get a monopoly on music distribution? Isn't that a little like Napoleon accusing Hitler of being a dictator? Holy tamoly, these guys got balls.
Secondly... the fact that they use "companies" shows once again that they don't get it. Computer networks don't have to be sponsored by companies! These lawmakers are so deluded that they not only do they allow corporations to overrun the country, they refuse to acknowledge that indviduals even exist anymore.
It gets worse every day...
Why don't you embrace your slashbotness instead of living in a dreamworld?
Does it go after the big time pirates?
No, because those big time pirates are in other countries.
This bill will enable companies to destroy families by throwing the 16 year old kid in jail for sharing expensive applications.
What harm are file sharers doing to society? Why does their action warrant time in court and/or prison?
I fail to see how this will even help corporations who see piracy as a problem. Often the reason people download expensive software is because they can't afford the price. Sure, that's no excuse, BUT will those companies see increased revenue as result of these actions?
So, what does throwing these kids in jail accomplish?
It just makes our government look like it is under the thumb of the corporate world.
Actually, I think this is good, in a way. Perhaps it will start to move more people towards Open Source applications, where downloading software is not illegal. I honestly think the reason Windows is so popular is because of the initial ability of users to easily pirate the operating system.
I pray for a day in which people will not be put in jail for downloading programs. Perhaps 2005 really is the year of linux?
What planet are you on?
The cable company.
The phone company.
The electric company.
Microsoft.
Viacom.
These companies have NO ACCOUNTABILITY WHATSOEVER to the public. They can do whatever the hell they want, pass whatever laws they want, charge whatever prices they want, and people don't have another option.
What do they have in common? They're all monopolies. Those are bad, remember?
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
I once laughed at the way OCP ran everything in Robocop.
I've stopped laughing...
What is going on is that even the evil forces of people like Orrin Hatch are realizing that criminal penalties are _not_ appropriate, that branding "otherwise law-abiding" people as felons for something that is individually rather trivial, but on a massive scale certainly non-trivial. It would behoove people to at least give them the credit for that observation rather than run headlong into Orwellian nightmares. Frankly, I don't feel sorry for anyone involved in this argument. No one is forcing you to play their game, but if you want their products, it shouldn't surprise you that they will do everything to ensure that you play by their rules.
What are we to do? Ignore them. Don't steal their products. Don't buy their products. Don't even listen to or watch their products wherever they might be. In the end, maybe by ignoring them for long enough they'll all go broke and die. In the meantime, get out of the damned house, go to a pub and throw your sheckles in the hats of your local musicians who really DO need the money. Buy their CDs. If you have a business, sponsor their gigs. You might even enjoy life a little more in the process.
Congradulations, are you happy being part of the problem?
Ignore anyone who tells you that you can't do anything. That you're powerless. That its inevitable, that its good for you. Ignore anyone that tells you to sit down, shut up, and eat whatever shit they feed you. Because they're wrong. You can do something, and that's what they're scared of. All it takes for evil to triumph is for good men and women to do nothing.
And no, corporate power isn't better-adapted to its environment than nation-states. To be more specific, Darwinian theories of evolution do NOT apply, as there IS NO ENVIRONMENT. What we have here is a power grab by a small segment of the population, one trying to return us to the "glory days" of late-19th-century Industrial Feudalism. The fact that they're using a philosophy as weak and repulsive as Social Darwinism to support their position is just the icing on the cake.
Bullshit.
Regardless of your claim that corporations are more efficient than nation states (which is a whole other argument, and is like comparing apples to oranges), I dispute that we should accept corporations as our government. Why? Because I believe that the best government is that which is for the people, and responsible to them. Efficiency is totally irrelevant - the question of what is the best government is a question of morals, beliefs, passions, and theology, not mathematics and work-motion studies.
Furthurmore, resolving that, since you are an individual, you have neither influence nor potential for influence at a national level is dead-end thinking and as repulsive a philosophy as handing government over to corporations. I could point out that people in power are individuals, and such an empirical argument is enough refutation, but taking it to a normative level is more satisfying: You can say that small scale things, like helping people out of a burning building, or giving directions to lost people, are good and important, but involving yourself in a cause you believe will improve everyones lives, like participating in a campaign to roll back the influence of corporations in national politics, is inherently superior in goodness and importance. I hate to quote a movie here, but "The greatest evil is the indifference of good men."
And finally, it isn't social evolution, it'd be political evolution.
Not everyone's goal is to screw everyone all the time.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
Winners and losers:
Justice Department gets more funding, more cases, can claim to be "tough on crime". Winners.
RIAA/MPAA no longer have to shell out bucks to sue people, they just report them to the Justice Department. Winners.
Court system, clogged already, gets further clogged with 1000s of P2P cases. Losers.
US Taxpayer has to pay for procsecuting P2P file shares. Losers.
P2P file sharers now get criminal records. Think about all the losses that brings in US society. In some states, that includes the right to vote. Big losers.
I've said it before, and I will say it again: the move of copyright infringment from civil law to criminal law is one of the most nasty and dangerous changes in recent copyright laws.
But they need to offer an alternative. You can't just NOT compete with piracy. It exists, it is there, any amount of unconstitutional (8th amendment at least) laws cannot stop that. This is exactly like the horse and buggy. CD's and physical media in general are no longer needed to gain musical performances, aka the horse and buggy. Digital online music on demand is the car.
I'm gonna take a second here and digress. If I buy an album, let's take an example from my father, so say The Wall by Pink Floyd. He bought that fucking thing in the 1970's on vinyl. Why the fuck should he have to pay another $18 for a CD. He already has the license to play the music right? So why does he have to keep paying full price? If he had his receipt and original and went to RCA (I assume that's the producer, I'm sure I'm wrong) and demanded a CD, he'd be laughed the hell out of there. So then it seems he holds a simple physical item, like a camera for example. But the record industry wants to stop you from selling the album to someone else, or even making copies of it. They want it both ways. I say, fuck them and fuck them hard. I really want every person on Earth to steal as much music as they can until these shitbags realize they can't play dirty pool and get away with it.
Anyhow, these companies, in order to exist, have to adapt. The law should not adapt for them. They have to provide attractive, high quality and available music samples and songs for a reasonable price. That's so fucking simple it's goddamn amazing that only Apple has figured it out. I think the folks at the RIAA should have all their money taken away to feed orphans and they get to live on the street for the rest of their natural days. They have been suckling on the teat of popular entertainment and stifling innovative and creative music for ages.
Slashdot is proof that Sturgeon's Law applies to mankind.
The free market does not always know best. Car companies in the early twentieth century bought up public transportation and shut it down to force people to buy cars. They're still discouraging pubic transportation from developing even today. This goes against the interest of everyone but a few rich car dealers and manufaturers. All of society is made to suffer because that's how it works in a 'free' market.
And I think you overestimate how smart US citizens are (a remarkably easy thing to do). They don't think too far ahead. When it's really obvious they're getting screwed (like it was with Divx) they don't fall for it. But when it's less obvious (DRM in iTunes anyone?) they fall like a ton 'o bricks. And pretty soon broadband with be ubiquitous enough that they can start phasing out physical media all together. Heck, the Ignorant Masses will probably look forward to that day: no more carrying around 500 CDs. Which is all well and good untill you're paying 5 cents every time you listen to an AAC.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Theft is theft. If thieves were going into each and every one of your neighbors houses day and ripping them off every day, I can guarentee there will be some dead thieves and a lot of people applauding -- well except for the thieves who will be claiming that civil rights are being taken away and everyone else is a bunch of nazis.
If you want to talk about huge conglomerates screwing over the average consumer, you better be sure that the average consumer isn't fucking things up for those few honest consumers out there first...
Theft is theft. Peer-to-Peer is not theft.
If you have an apple, and I take it away from you, the number of apples in the global sense has not changed; the change is purely relative: I have one more apple than I had previously, and you have one less apple than you had previously.
If, on the other hand, you have an apple, and I clone the apple, the global number of apples has increased. You have not lost an apple, but I have gained one.
There is no theft involved in the 2nd.
I'm not going to try and claim to you that you're in the wrong here. It would fall on deaf ears anyway. However, if I asked you to prove that you're losing money because of P2P or whatever, you'd have to show that everyone that "pirates" your software would have bought it in the first place.
I.E. if I download a copy of Maya or something off of a P2P network, I know that I have done something illegal (copyright infringement), however, I also know that the company has lost no money from this act, as I would never have bought it in the first place.
Please remember two things about peer-to-peer:
1.) The vast majority of illegally copied software and multimedia files would not have been purchased at the asking price; therefore corporations in reality lose very little money.
2.) Very few pieces of software are worth the asking price, and even fewer corporations need the price that they're asking. It is this exhuberant overpricing that drives many people to download.
Case in point: It is illegal to download photoshop. It is also absolutely absurd that it costs $600. It's not worth $600, and Adobe doesn't need $600 per copy.
Case 2 in point: Windows. It is illegal to download windows. It is also absurd how much money it costs - $100 per copy. Times millions of copies a year. Microsoft doesn't need that money. Microsoft has $36,000,000,000 in the bank, in cash. If they never, ever sold another piece of software, they could continue as a corporation, and pay all of their employees at their current salary rates, solely on the interest of the money they have.
So, in closing. Downloading software is illegal. Fucking consumers is immoral.
~Will
sig?